Clues to Using the “Other” Account Updater Responses

When Vantiv requests updates from the card networks and there has been an update (a "match"), we receive one of four responses:

1) New account number

2) New expiration date

3) Contact cardholder

4) Account closed

The value of the first two is pretty clear, but the latter two can be ambiguous. What can you do with this information?

Contact cardholder responses are “temporary” – issuers use this response when card numbers change and the bank prefers merchants get the new information from the customer, or when temporary holds are placed on the account – either to protect the bank or to protect the cardholder. The appropriate response is, unsurprisingly, to contact the cardholder.

In the longer term, merchants should continue requesting account updates following declines for these cards and to assume the cards are still valid until the issuer sends an account closed response.

Account closed responses are definitive: The customer’s account is truly no longer active. The proper action is to stop billing the account and remove the card from your decline recycling efforts to avoid unnecessary authorization fees. To ensure customer longevity, request a new method of payment from your customer the next time they log in or in your next outbound email.

Vantiv performs extensive data analysis on account updater trends to ensure you are optimizing the continuity of your payments.